God Ordained Role of Government

It’s a fallen world. While improved in many respects over the previous eight, this year still might be called the 2017 Triple Whammy, or in other words, “Boy, don’t we hope 2018 will be better?”

“SHUT UP!” they reasoned.

One of the most foolish ideas this year was uttered every time someone insisted: “We may disagree, but you should at least respect my opinion.”

Really? Why is that?

Where is it written that foolish opinions deserve respect? Be careful. Don’t use this as an excuse for high-minded conclusion jumping. We’re talking opinions here. Not people.

Of course, human beings arguably deserve some measure of respect, regardless of their degree of fallenness. Even the worst of us is made in the image of God. That’s why we are to respect people’s right to life even before their birth, their right to exist after birth and their dignity, which necessarily includes a right to hold an opinion.

However, when it comes to human behavior and speech, it’s prudent to withhold respect until earned. It’s a sign of the times that fuzzy thinkers no longer distinguish between the right to have an opinion verses the non-existent right to demand that an opinion be respected.

Interestingly, it is in the media and the academy where we find those most adamant about denying others the right to an opinion while demanding their opinions must be respected, or else. Including their opinion that you should be denied an opinion.

You just don’t hear Voltaire quoted much these days: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” The contemporary politically correct version is more like: “I disapprove of what you say, so I will do everything I can to prevent you from saying it.”

If that contemporary version doesn’t rise to the level of an opinion deserving disrespect, what does?

2. HERE’S DEFINITELY AN OPINION DESERVING DISRESPECT …

When confronted with evil today, contemporary wisdom commands us to tolerate it, excuse it, minimize it, embrace it, help advance it, even engage in it. What happened to the idea that we should point it out for the pernicious thing it is, and demand that it be stopped? Or, as the first Christians repeatedly urged, “Repent!”

When did you last hear today’s practitioners of socially acceptable evil being told to repent? Not often in 2017. That’s because to do so runs smack up against the secular world’s most sacred doctrine, which is “tolerance is mandatory, and intolerance will not be tolerated.”

If that sounds impractical, even contradictory, it is, as we see playing out like run-away bumper cars, increasingly every day in the culture. It ends up being just another totalitarian impulse to arbitrarily force acceptance of the sin du jour, while demonizing anyone who calls sin a sin.

Which brings us to that Good Book:

As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear. (1 Timothy 5:20)

How about in 2018 a little more of First Timothy and a little less “go along to get along”? Can we get an “Amen!”?

For those still needing persuasion, there also are additional benefits to stamping out sin among sinners.

let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5:20)

3. FINALLY, AREN’T YOU TIRED OF DISTRUSTING GOVERNMENT?

In yours truly’s lifetime the credibility of nearly every modern institution has all but crumbled, but none more so than government. That makes it exceedingly difficult to honor civil magistrates, let alone to pray for them, as we are commanded to do.

God has put the civil government there to do essentially two things: suppress evil and punish evil doers. You could look it up.

However, considering the first two prongs of our 2017 Triple Whammy, it’s clear that government has gone the way of the world, not doing very well what it’s supposed to be doing, while advancing plenty of the stuff it’s supposed to be suppressing and punishing. Moreover, it accomplishes this Alice-in-Wonderland upside down-ness with the power of the sword, fueled by the power to siphon off your wealth.

Yeah, these civil servants ordained by God to do one thing, instead use their authority to do precisely the opposite, then add insult to injury by forcing you to pay for it.

All of this was easily foreseen. It is a fallen world, right? That explains why the patently criminal behavior of Hillary Clinton has gone unpunished, and why the Barack Obama-politicized federal government is allowed to get away with illegally targeting Christians and conservatives, after consenting with a wink to permit like-minded progressive friends’ destruction of evidence, refusal to obey subpoenas and obvious lies under oath.

When the powers that be have been challenged about these obvious transgressions, the transgressors responded as would college campus snowflakes, with a demand that their critics, “Shut up!” Then those who persist in disagreement have been reminded they are “on the wrong side of history,” and won’t be tolerated much longer.

Considering this sordid state of affairs, let’s raise a toast and a prayer for a better 2018. Here’s to a year devoid of politically correct falsehoods, to an end to pretending evil is praiseworthy and for a new era in which God-ordained government can be trusted to punish evil doers and suppress evil, while doing little else so as to minimize its illegitimate meddling in our lives and the costs to us who pay the bills.